By Chaturanga Samarawickrama  

Despite assurances that there will be no scheduled power outages in the next three months, the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL) announced its decision to impose power outages from yesterday.  

The PUCSL Chairman, Janaka Ratnayake said the power shedding starts from 2.30 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. and from 6.30 p.m. to 10.30 p.m.  

One-hour power cuts will be implemented in four different areas between 2.30 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. Meanwhile, 45 minutes of power shedding will be implemented in other areas between 6.30 p.m and 10.30 p.m.  “This is an unavoidable and unpleasant decision that had to be made due to not having sufficient diesel, furnace oil and naptha stocks. Therefore, 400 MW of electricity has been lost to the national grid. The decision to reduce hydroelectricity generation has been implemented along with the scheduled power shedding,” Ratnayake said.  
Accordingly, 10 GWh of hydropower generation per day was reduced to 7.5 GWh while managing the water at reservoirs for the next 45 days.  Due to the inability to meet their financial commitments, the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) was unable to get sufficient diesel, furnace oil and naptha stocks yesterday. So the PUCSL intervened and managed to borrow Rs. 250 million from the Lanka Electricity Co. (Pvt) Ltd. (LECO) from next Monday (21) to overcome this situation temporarily.  

But we need a long-lasting solution in order to avoid this scheduled power shedding for at least the next two years, Rathnayaka said.